A growing number of businesses have begun using call centers to handle interactions with customers. Companies typically use call center services, for example, to manage outbound and inbound communication campaigns to potential customers for telemarketing or to existing customers for collecting information or customer follow-up. Agents are expected to rapidly supply information for various campaigns of the call center. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems assist the agent in placing and receiving calls. Such systems are typically used to distribute incoming calls among a plurality of agents. The ACD may utilize a switch, which may control the dialing and connection of each telephone of each agent.
The ACD may receive calls for inbound campaigns or place calls for outbound campaigns and connect the calls to an available agent of the call center. The ACD system may assign calls to available agents based on specialties associated with a particular agent or in a round-robin fashion. The ACD system determines if the agent is not currently handling a customer. Some ACD systems have a direct communication channel with each individual telephone and are signaled by the phone when the phone is in use. However, such ACD systems require dedicated hardware/software that allow the individual phone and server or switch of the system to communicate with each other.
Other ACD systems detect when the telephone of the agent is in use. If the line is in use the system connects the customer with the next available agent. Although the ACD system is able to determine if the telephone is in use, the ACD system is unable to determine if the agent is currently handling a customer or if the agent has dialed-out using the dial pad of the telephone. Accordingly, there is a need for a system for a contact center that allows a telephone call center management system to identify when an agent has made a telephone call outside the controls of the call center management system. In addition, there is a need to alert the system resources as well as supervisors when an agent as manually initiated a call and the duration of telephone calls initiated by the agent.